Maya Angelou Quotes

I write to relieve an intellectual itch. I stumble across a hitherto neglected set of events, transformations, characters, or source materials from the past, and they nag at me until I make sense of them in words. But I also write to seduce and to make my readers think.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

I think I'm writing for an intelligent stranger - you know, in my mind I can't remember who coined that phrase first. I don't want to write anything that makes me cringe, first of all. I cringe a lot - mostly when I hear popular music.

Reading, like writing, is a creative act. If readers only bring a narrow range of themselves to the book, then they'll only see their narrow range reflected in it.

I like looking at a book and asking myself, 'How do I replicate that experience I just had as a reader?'

I write out of my intellectual experience.

When I'm writing, it's because I'm trying to figure something out for myself. If I don't believe in what I've written, then how can I expect anyone else to believe in that, either?

Many times I have written something, and after it was published, I understood what I was saying.

An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

A novel is a relationship, you know? When you read a book, the writer has done half the work, and you're doing half the work. You're providing the imagination; the words are turning into pictures in your mind. There's an active relationship that's going on.

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.

Whatever's going on in my life shows up in the writing room.

I don't believe you just create a character out of thin air, there's always something of yourself you bring.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that writing is mysterious; you don't ever truly know where it is coming from, so don't edit yourself line by line. Don't get in your own way. Whatever is truly there at the core, that is your voice.

The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.

Probably, subliminally, I think of the reader as a kind of collaborator. I don't want to say something for the reader that the reader could have said for himself.

There's always an element of truth to what I write because that's why I write.

I really do pride myself on being able to help other people tell their stories and bring out the best in them. But I still, every song I'm writing, I still need to relate to it. I still need to find my true self in it, or else it'll feel dishonest. I mean, everything has a queer meaning as far as I'm concerned.

I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.

It's so difficult to be conscious of a development of a style. You find yourself writing in a certain style, and the analysis of how you came to it can only ever be applied retroactively. You're never conscious of why you're producing it.

What I realized is that my interest in literature has more deeply structured my practice than I thought.

When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously, they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters.

I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.